The Soul's Vision and Hearing of Jesus
John ix. 37
And Jesos said onto him, Thoa hast both Been Him, and it if He that talketh with thee.’ — John ix. 37.
WE have, in our Lord’s interview with this sturdy blind man, a very remarkable exception to His usual methods. Generally, He was himself reticent about His Messiahship, and enjoined silence concerning it on those who believed it. Here He devotes Himself to bringing this man up to the confession that He is the Christ, and makes to him one of the only two articulate utterances claiming Messiahship which fell from His lips, in addition to those confided to the immediate circle of His disciples. The reason for that is not far to seek.
This blind man, cast out from the synagogue, was found by Christ, and the question was put to him, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” In beautifal contrast to the calm, collected self-reliance with which he had fronted the council and endured unmoved the brow-beating of the Sanhedrim, he falls, as it were, at Christ’s feet in humble docility: “Who is He, that I might believe on Him?” Was that credulity? Certainly not. He had a very good reason absolutely to trust Jesus Christ, as he does in these great words:
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“Tell me anything; and whatsoever Thon dost wj I will accept.” Therefore he gets the foil-toned confession, “Thon hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee.”
Now, the other instance where our Lord thus plainly revealed Himself as Messiah to comparative outsiders is also in this gospel; and it presents a remarkable parallel, and almost verbal identity, with the words before us. To the Samaritan woman Christ said, “I that speak unto thee, am He **; to this man, “It is He that talketh with thee **; the fact of their having free conversation with the long-hoped-for Messiah being dwelt on in both cases. But the fact that “thou hast seen Him” is added in the case of the lately blind man, and with great beauty points to the miracle as not only a proof of His Messiahship, but also as a call for the healed man’s grateful love. It we take the text in connection with that other confession of Messiahship, we may get light upon several important things.
L We see here the kind of people to whom Christ delights to make frank revelations of Himself.
Take this man before us as an illustration. He is sturdy, absolutely sincere, not to be cajoled, or browbeaten, or tempted, or coaxed into saying a single word beyond what he knew, but standing firmly, on his own two feet, on the solid basis of experienced fact, and refasing to be tempted one hair’s-breadth beyond that. And when the doctors try to over-awe him by their superior knowledge, he coolly replies,” You seem to know a great deal. It is very strange that you do not know this. / know, by a better way than you
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know, for my knowledge is living knowledge, flowing from experience.**
Note again, how this man was faithfal to the growing light as it dawned upon him. He passed through three stages in his notions about Jesus Christ. “The man that is called Jesus anointed mine eyes” — he began with that. And, as he thought a little more, he answered the question ““What sayest thou of Him *’? with the further recognition, “He is a prophet 1” And opposition and cavilling only rooted him more firmly in, and gave him a wider perception of, what was involved in his primary experience of receiving sight — “If this Man were not from God He could do nothing.” “The man called Jesus” — “a prophet — one” from God “— on these convictions he stands, and nothing will shake him. He obeys the light that he has. He is absolutely faithful to it. He will neither smother it nor exaggerate it, but he holds to it with a grasp that nothing and nobody can loose. They fling him out of the synagogue, but he clutches his truth. And so Jesus Christ comes to him and says,” Dost thou believe on the Son of Man? “Lord, who is He?” He was ready to accept anything that his healer told him; and, whatever it was, he would grapple it to his heart, and live upon and obey it. Therefore the Master turned the whole light of His face upon him, and said, “I am He I”
Nobody else but one poor, profligate, Samaritan woman heard such words from His lips. The lesson from these facti is that, if we want Christ to be on frank, confidential terms with us, we must hold faithfully by whatsoever we already see to be the will and the message of Qod,
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»nd we must be lovingly prepared to accept whatevei Jesus Christ says, whether it confirms or contradicts oui present prejudices or opinions, and to “follow the Lamh whithersoever He goeth.” Our attitude must be one — if I may use grand words — of spiritusd receptivity of all Christ’s teaching. Or, to put it into plainer words, our attitude must just be the old, commonplace, familiar one, “Speak! Lord 1 For Thy servant heareth.”
Then, no matter though we are excommunicated by the Sanhedrim — that will not interfere with Christ’s talking to us. No matter for the black specks on the record of our past lives, as that of the profligate Samaritan woman that had five husbands, and was living with a sixth man that was not her husband. No matter though we may belong to a set of people on whom the sacerdotal and orthodox ofl&cials look down with contempt, as they did on the Samaritans of old. If Christ sees in us honest, faithful obedience to what we know, and earnest longing that more light may break upon our paths, and willingness to believe every word of His, then anything is possible rather than that He should lock His lips when we say, “What is it. Lord, that I might believe?” No I never can it so be 1 He wUl answer, as He answered the outcast Samaritan and the excommunicated blind man.
II. Now, take another point. How does Christ show Himself to such people?
Did you ever notice how exquisitely beautifal the addition in my text is to the words which He used to the woman of Samaria? To her He simply said, “I that tftlk with thee am He.” To the man who had only had a pair of eyei that could see anything for some four-THS B0UL*8 VISION AND HSABINO OT JBBU8. 123
and-twenty hours, He said, “Thou hast seen Him.’* And was not that enough to prove His claim? “Thou hast seen Him.” He gave you the eyes to see; now He has given you the Christ to look at. “Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee.”
There are two things, revelation by vision and revelation by word. And although I kpow, of course, that He is “the Christ, whom having not seen we love, in whom, though now we see Him not, yet believing we rejoice,” I am bold to say that we too, if we cultivate the temper about which I have been speaking, as exemplified by these two people, may have as true vision of Christ as if — ay 1 far more truly than if — our outward eyes had beheld His bodily form. To us, too, if we will penetrate to the depths and realities of the relation that subsists between Christ and a believing soul — to us, too. He gives new faculties, and He gives the object for them. He gives us eyes to see, and He gives ua Himself to behold.
For, be sure of this, that the perception of Christ’s real presence and work with us and on us, which is made ours through faith, is as real, as direct, and, I believe, a great deal more reliable, than the thing that we call “sight,” which is secured by the play of a material beam of light upon nerves that may be diseased, and may carry erroneous messages to the brain.
“Seeing is believing.” Ah! turn it about the other way: “Believing is seeing.” Jesus Christ will reveal Himself to “that inner eye which is the bliss of solitude” and the joy of the Christian life — will reveal Himself to that inward eye so clearly, so closely, so certainly as there will be no room left for doubt. Chriitian men and
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women, we are not truly Christians until we have translated the words of Revelation into the facts of our experience, and until we have for oorselves seen the Lord, and for oorselves rejoiced in the vision of the Christ
But this vision is not granted to men who do not pass through the discipline of which I have already spoken. And if we are for ever feasting the eyes of our souls and the desires of our hearts upon the things that are seen and temporal, we cannot see the things that are unseen and eternal. If you arrange the focus of your telescope so as that it shall command nearer objects, when you turn it to the more distant and more real ones there will be but mist. They make field-glasses with an arrangement by which you turn a screw, and one set of glasses is for *’ field/* and another for “sea,” and another for “‘theatre.’* So we have to change the focus of our eyes, if we are to *^8ee the King in His beauty, and the land that is very far oflf.” Whilst we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen,” for the things that are seen are temporal, and the things that are not seen are eternal,’* Christ will show us Himself if we will only use the eyes which He has given to as all when we turn from darkness to light. He is come that they that are blind might see, and if we look we shall behold.
Further, “thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee.** The word that is used here in the original conveys not only the idea of speech, but of familiar, frank conversation, such as two friends might have with one another. And, as I have said about sight, so I say about speech, — all deep Christian experience verifiei the allegation that our communion with JesuR Christ is not a monologue, with all the speech on our Bide, and none on His, but that He, too, speaks to us, in the depths of our hearts, in many a holy thought breathed into our minds, in illuminations given to us beyond our will, with regard to duty, and sometimes with regard to truth. But in whatsoever way He speaks to His friends, sure I am that we have not got to the depths of the possible blessedness of the Christian life, unless we know something of the whispers of” the still small voice “in our spirits, and have” heard Christ, and been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus.**
I fear, that in speaking thus, I am transcending the experience of many professing Christians, partly, perhaps, because they have not been accustomed to trace these inward whispers to their true source; and partly, also, because they have not come near enough to Jesus Christ to hear Him, unless He speaks in thunders of judgment and of terror. But all love delights to whisper, and Christ delights to speak low into the ear that is close to His lips, as He did to the beloved disciple, who laid his head on the Master’s bosom, at the table in the upper room.
Dear brethren, Christ has not fallen dumb. He is still the Incarnate Word, and His very life’s energy, so to speak, is to impart Himself. Only let us still the tumult within, and we shall hear the Voice. Let us clap a muzzle and a gag on the yelping passions in the kennel of our hearts. Let us try sometimes to get the roar of the Niagara of business and daily life out of our ears, and then we shall hear the voice that speaks in the silences. Christ still “speaketh from Heaven,’* and, though His voice does not yet” shake the earth,** it
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enters into, and enlightenS) and calms the spirit of the listener.
III. The last point that I would snggest is the glad certitude and deepened faith that result from Christ’i speech and the sight of Him.
This man could have argued for a month with the Rabbis, and would probably have had the better of them at the end of it But, when Jesus Christ says, “It is He that talketh with thee,” the Master has got inside all his fences, and straight to Ms heart; and he has not another word to say except, “Lord 1 I believe **; “and he worshipped Him.”
Which, being turned into a principle, is this. Get, as we all may if we like, that first-hand familiarity of personal intercourse with Christ, and see Him, as we may if we will, and we shall not want any more arguments and logical defences of our faith. So we can let the world babble as it likes, and all doubtful questions be settled as they may; for our faith, which goes down far deeper than questions and arguments and logic, down to the fact of what we have felt, stands untouched by any of them. Why should Christian people, who may assure themselves of Christ by the very same process by which they assure themselves that they are alive, because they feel that they are — why should they be so desperately frightened about every new heresy that starts up, and put themselves into a pucker, as if the ark of the Lord was going to be destroyed, when it is only the cart that carries it that shakes a bit? We may go far deeper than all the region of controversy, down to the facts of life. We may have the witness in ourselves, and say to everybody that questions ui,” I am ignorant of a great deal, but I know
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thii, that He hath opened mine eyes; and with mj opened eyes I saw Him. He hath touched mine ears, and with my purged ears I heard Him. Therefore, you may talk till doomsday, and not convince me that I was mistaken in that which is the very basis and rock-foundation of my life.” “I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him until that day.”